Irish Fest at the Irish American Heritage Center

Make sure you stop by our booth at the 2016 Irish American Heritage Center Irish Fest that runs from July 8th - July 10th.  Lots of great Music, Food and Irish Gifts!  See the link below for more details.

http://irish-american.org/at-the-center/irish-fest/

Cookbook Love: Farmette’s Farmer’s Cheese

Check out my new love.

Isn’t she lovely? 

I adore so many things about this book I don’t even know where to begin.  I suppose the logical place would be with the author’s story of going from living in the U.S. with a career in broadcast production to starting all over on her husband’s family dairy farm in the southwest of Ireland. As she describes it herself on her blog, she is “finding my way around an Irish kitchen and becoming a bonafide cook in a world where traditional trumps quick or convenient.” Her book, The Farmette Cookbook is part novel, part recipe and DIY how-to book and an absolute delight to read from cover-to-cover.  The book features a varied and interesting set of recipes from the very simple Farmer’s Cheese (below), to classics such as Classic Colcannon, holiday worthy like Little Christmas Roast Duck with Tarragon-Leek Bread Stuffing, and finally, the completely unexpected, such as Wild Garlic and Soft Irish Cheese Tamales.  I love the author’s take on Irish food products and traditions and her respect for time-honored Irish kitchen skills as well as the high quality ingredients she has access to on the farm.  The Farmette Cookbook took me far away from my own life and kitchen in the best way as I imagined myself making fresh cheese on an Irish dairy farm.  For now my new farmehouse dining table (my other new love) will have to suffice.

Farmer’s Cheese from the Farmette Cookbook by Imen McDonnell

According to the book, the author learned to make this cheese at a food festival in an ecovillage in County Tipperary.

Makes 2 cups

1 gallon whole milk

½ cup white vinegar

2 teaspoons fine sea salt

1. Line a colander with a double layer of cheesecloth.  

2. Pour the milk into a large, heavy bottomed saucepan, and bring to a boil over medium heat. Stir frequently to keep the milk from scorching.  When it comes to a boil, immediately reduce the heat to low, and stir in the vinegar. The milk should immediately separate into curds and whey.  If it does not separate, add a little bit more vinegar, 1 tablespoon at a time, until you see the milk solids coagulate into curds swimming in greenish-blue whey.

3. Pour the curds and whey into the lined colander.  Rinse gently with cool water and sprinkle the curds with salt.  Tie up the cheesecloth and press it a bit with your hands to remove any excess whey. Let the cheesecloth hang for 1 to 2 hours; open it, remove the cheese and chop coarsley.  Transfer and store in an airtight container.

Once you pour in the vinegar, the mixture separates into curds and whey.

Curds, draining.

Hanging.

Voilà!

This cheese will last up to a week in the refrigerator.

I had to eat some immediately, with fruit, almonds, sea salt and agave nectar. 

I’m super boring and eat the same breakfast almost every single day. Toasted brown bread topped with preserves, ricotta cheese and almonds. So I’ll be using this in place of the ricotta - a small but welcomed (and delicious) deviation.  Yep, I was doing “toast” before it became trendy. 

If you aren’t on the toast bandwagon, you could use this cheese in a million other ways:

Fold in chopped herbs and some olive oil and serve with bread, crackers, olives and cured meats as part of an appetizer plate.

To finish a pizza just as it comes out of the oven.  Just dollop some on each slice and add a drizzle of olive oil and some sea salt.

In summer pasta dishes.  I’m thinking bacon, corn and kale pasta with fresh herbs and grape tomatoes.

Enjoy!


 

Dinner in Minutes: Salmon with Capers and Dill

I get really excited when I find a recipe that contains nothing but ingredients that I always have around. Even more so when the recipe is quick enough to make on a weeknight - which for me, means it has to be super-quick. I have to confess that I miss taking more time to make dinner and not feeling rushed, but “the days are long and the years are short” so I know that dinner won’t always look and feel like an episode of “Chopped”.  For now, dinnertime is a whirlwind and recipes like this one save the day.  The prep (i.e . getting the ingredients out of your fridge/cupboard) takes less than 5 minutes, and the cooking times in the recipe were spot on for me.  Paired with broiled zucchini, a lentil salad that I made earlier in the week and rice made in my programmable rice cooker (I set it in the morning and rice is ready by dinner - yay!) the entire meal took only 15 minutes to prepare from start to finish.  Clean up was a breeze.

I’ll be making this again and again. I think it’s worth noting that Rachel Allen doesn’t mention the suddenly ubiquitous “brown butter” anywhere in the recipe.  I assure you the butter the salmon cooks in turns an irresistible and nutty tasting brown but no buzz words are needed to sell this recipe.  

Salmon with Capers and Dill

From Rachel's Irish Family Food: 120 Classic Recipes from My Home to Yours by Rachel Allen.

4 tablespoons butter, diced

4 salmon fillets (with the skin left on, if you wish)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

4 tablespoons capers, drained and rinsed

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice mixed with 6 to 8 tablespoons water

4 teaspoons chopped fresh dill (I used 3 teaspoons dried dill)

10 minutes until dinner. Seriously.

Place a frying pan over medium-high heat. When it is hot, add a couple of pats of butter, very quickly followed by the salmon, with the skin side down. Fry for 3 to 4 minutes, until golden brown underneath. Turn over, season with salt and pepper, and fry for another couple of minutes, or until the fish is just cooked through. (The timing will depend on the thickness of the salmon fillets and heat of the pan.)

Crispy skin and all that lovely brown butter. I wish you could smell this. 

Add the capers, along with the remaining butter, and lemon juice mixture and boil for 1 minute. Season to taste, adding more lemon juice or water, if necessary. Transfer the salmon onto warmed plates, stir the chopped dill into the sauce, and pour over the fish to serve.

Knives down!